The Slavic people around Lake Ilmen fell into poverty and boredom when they ended their annual farming period.
The climate conditions in this area are naturally far inferior to those in the Ukrainian steppes in the far south, and at least slightly better than the fragile agriculture in Northern Europe. However, primitive agriculture made it difficult for the small-scale peasant economy to exist. All farmers could only build collective farms and rely on mutual help to take care of the large-scale farmland.
Now that birch bark paper was available, transcribing the information written on the wooden board onto the paper was the next major task for Rurik and his wives.
The copying work was carried out in an orderly manner, and special issues regarding land ownership were exposed.
Because there are no small farmers here in the complete sense, even in the White Tree Manor, there are some areas that belong to "all of us". That is everyone's land, it is public land, and everyone should farm it together. In this way, no matter whether the harvest is good or bad, the families participating in the farming will get the output equally.
As for the ownership of the land that is freely developed, it is your own, and the farmer family has to bear the responsibility for its own profits and losses. If it cannot be operated, it will be sold.
Therefore, out of the consideration of maximizing profits, the farmers of Baishu Manor cultivated both public fields and private fields. Primitive commune-style agriculture is spontaneously disintegrating, and the small-scale peasant economy is developing.
But are the vast forest areas of northern Eastern Europe suitable for small-scale farming?
In other words, any agricultural economic activity is affected by the actual geographical factors. People are selfish. Isn’t it because the farmers group together to keep warm because they have limited returns and huge risks when they go out to work alone?
In this land of Eastern Europe that Rurik knew, the agricultural reforms carried out by Tsar Alexander II were to dismantle the old farm system and turn it into an overwhelming number of small farmers, so that the Tsar could directly collect taxes from the farmers. In theory this was progress, but the result was the creation of a host of new landowners and millions of bankrupts. Tens of millions of bankrupt people have lost everything, forming another kind of torrent...
"The farm system cannot be changed. If you let them work alone, you will let them die. They need to be reunited and reunited. At the worst, I will organize a production team for them, give them farm tools, and let them choose their own leaders. Every year, I will determine the number of leaders based on their farmland area. Taxes will be levied in proportion to the average yield per mu.”
Rurik let out a sigh of relief. He really didn't go to the fields to do statistics. He took it for granted that they were the largest number of small farmers. In fact, White Tree Manor was still a primitive commune, and the situation in other farms was similar.
Those large group of boyar nobles who were canonized may not really be far ahead of the rest of the farm when it comes to wealth.
Each farm is more of a system of mutual help, but some nobles have been born. They are already stronger than ordinary farmers, and they will only get stronger in the future.
"Is this a good thing? If they can make the farm where they live pay rent and taxes to me, then that's a good thing."
If each farm has public and private land, statistical distinctions must be made. Now that paper already exists, you don’t have to worry about storage issues when recording these contents. The cut paper has changed from about the size of A3 paper to A4 paper. It has shrunk in half and is more dexterous to hold in your hand.
The area of paper only became smaller, because Rurik ordered his wives and concubines to write the information they recorded small enough. Only one side of a piece of paper was enough to record an astonishing amount of information than before.
The textual information is recorded in classical Latin, and the large numbers are in Arabic letters.
Why must we use Latin? Rurik can look at these things from the perspective of long history. Just like the Eastern official script can maintain the same writing method and meaning for two thousand years, the same way Western classical Latin can preserve its meaning for two thousand years. Classical Latin is not dead. It is the writing system used within the clergy group. The scriptures transcribed by it were confirmed by Emperor Constantine. In order to ensure the purity of their faith, clergy throughout the ages ensured the spelling and meaning of phrases in this language. Does not drift.
The wives and concubines have gone through the whole winter of last year. They have learned the use of common vocabulary in classical Latin from John Ingvar. They can use seven or eight hundred words, and can use various cases well. They have already learned how to use it in daily life. enough.
What's more, the young man John Invar has been dragged to Novgorod. This man happens to be a linguistics consultant. Rurik is also very willing that the future official documents of the Rus' Principality will be preserved in classical Latin.
He firmly believed that as long as this was done, the paper documents would be preserved. Even if the documents were really rotten and damaged, they would continue to be copied in Latin, so that they could be preserved for thousands of years, allowing distant descendants to know their ancestors.
Because these documents, even the initial "Acre Survey Report", are extremely critical historical data. They are the documents that constitute the soul of the Russian state.
The Western Empire has been dead for four hundred years, and the Eastern Empire is still holding on.
Just like there will be no Rome in the world after 1453, just like there will be Rome everywhere in the world after 1453.
If the classical Latin language of Rome was fully resurrected in the elite aristocratic circle of the Principality of Rus, Rome would not be resurrected in Northern Europe, but it would also be equivalent to a resurrection of some kind.
Why didn't the Romans do this kind of spiritual behavior?
In the long run, as long as Latin was popularized, the descendants of the principality would have cheap tools for information exchange.
Whether it’s the Vikings from various tribes coming from Northern Europe (including the Rus’ tribe), the Pan-Slavs everywhere, and the Pan-Finns with a limited population, everyone speaks as many as three languages, including their own dialects. It’s really What a mess? A country should have a language that everyone can accurately recognize each other. Even if the majority of the people still speak their own language, at least everyone in the upper circles can speak Latin. If all people learned it, the results of the principality's governance would plummet.
It even stopped the possibility of the separation of the three ethnic groups from the root.
Rurik, with his oriental thinking, just didn't like the structure of a small country with few people.
He had wanted to do this for a long time. Last year, he only implemented it among his wives and concubines, and the results began to be perfectly reflected this year. They are writing the official documents of the Principality of Rus in Latin, which is tantamount to further deepening their memory.
The descendants they bear must inherit all this, and it is passed on to their descendants.
Even Noren from Narvik Port picked up a quill pen to write Latin. She lacked knowledge of Rome and was too lazy to understand it. However, she lay on the desk and relied on the light of the oil lamp to write curved letters on the paper. This feeling is really wonderful. This is the job of a scribe, to record information and pass it on a thousand years later, so that future generations will remember that there was a beautiful girl named Nolen in the distant past. It is really exciting to think about it.
The copying work did not take too long. After all, the information they obtained from surveying and mapping was not as huge as imagined, at least for now.
The information was transcribed before the paper was used up, and the wooden boards could probably be burned as firewood.
"Burn it? Is it necessary? We have put in a lot of effort." Svetlana dissuaded everyone on behalf of everyone with a puzzled mood.
"In addition to occupying the entire room, do they have any need to exist?" Rurik asked.
"But we transport them so carefully..."
"Yes. But we have better paper, and these wooden boards can be destroyed. Including the wooden boards that record ancient stories stored in our hometown in Ross, you need to copy them on lightweight paper. After the snow melts, we will continue to For further surveying and mapping, we need a huge amount of paper, and new papermaking work is about to begin!"
With paper, the possibilities are endless!
This is not just as simple as recording and disseminating knowledge, but also requires manpower and material resources to produce it. It also provides job opportunities to the local Slavs who are bored after the busy farming period.
A new round of snowfall occurred in early December of the Julian calendar. This time it did not last long, but the snowfall was more serious.
Lake Ilmen is not too small. When the forest is covered with white snow, the snow on the frozen lake is blown clean by the fierce north wind.
In the past, local residents lacked the ability and willingness to cut ice for fishing.
The Russians were different. When they spent the winter here for the first time, they carried big axes and dug big holes in the ice half a meter behind.
Rurik allowed the mercenaries he brought to do this kind of thing, and old Otto ordered some of his old friends to do the same.
The Russians' winter fishing work in the glacial lakes of Eastern Europe replicated the winter fishing work in the depths of the Gulf of Bothnia. A number of large holes were dug out, slightly disturbing the lake surface, which gave strong stimulation to the bass under the lake. Fish under the ice in winter are generally somewhat hypoxic. They are keenly aware of the smell of fresh oxygen, although when the ice breaks, fish will swarm out.
No, the crazy bass even jumped out of the hole, and the Russians who cut the ice burst out laughing and waited for the fish.
The local Slavs who were watching were dumbfounded by this situation. Maybe the Russians had magical power to make the fish jump out on their own, or maybe this had nothing to do with magical power but was directly related to strength.
If there is a person who is the first to eat crabs, he can be sure that the harvest from digging ice to catch fish is amazing. Even if cutting ice is a very heavy physical work, the local Slavs are willing to do it.
They are not as strong as the bear-like Russians, and they cherish the limited iron tools. They are afraid of the cold and dare not leave the farm too far. They even have poor fishing techniques in the warm period, which leads to the misconception that there are not many fish in the lake. Know. Many factors led them to witness the miracle of winter fishing performed by the Russians.
What about reality? After the crusade against the rebellious Pine Needle Manor, the regular troops from the Ross Principality's hometown used advanced trawlers to sweep the lake area, which proved that this lake is surrounded by a group of farms, and the lake is almost undeveloped.
After a heavy snowfall in December, the smell of grilled fish begins to fill the walled city of Novgorod.
The Russians have not invented the "Chagan Lake-style" winter fishing technique. Although Rurik knows this method, he only knows a little bit about it. It is not necessary to study and implement it, because fishing with traditional fishing methods has achieved great results.
A special city wall appeared in Novgorod, and its bricks were made of frozen fish. Grilled fish is the most traditional way to eat fish. People from various Viking tribes went out on their way. When they encountered a pond, they fished out the fish, cut off the head and tail, disemboweled them, put them on the branches, sprinkled salt on them, grilled the fish, and then gnawed the fish to create an authentic dish. Viking picnic.
The same goes for the Russians, but the local Slavic method is to stew fish.
Due to the environment, the local people guard the almost infinitely wide forest and have more time to pick mushrooms throughout the year. Especially in the forest after the rain in September, men and women from various farms are willing to pick mushrooms.
The most common oyster mushrooms are the rare and delicious chanterelle mushrooms, truffles, pine milk mushrooms, etc. Most of the girls who picked mushrooms picked edible mushrooms. As for the existence of poisonous mushrooms, eating poisonous mushrooms is a small probability event.
Unlike the Viking tribes, there are cases where people deliberately eat poisonous mushrooms in order to hallucinate and communicate with their ancestors who lived in Asgard.
They use sun-dried mushrooms and fish to stew them. The most commonly caught bass in Lake Ilmen is already delicious and tender, and the guanylic acid and glutamic acid contained in sun-dried mushrooms make the taste even more delicious. to a higher level, thus making up for the long-term regret that local people have difficulty in obtaining salt due to geographical limitations.
The Russians are coming, the Russians want to settle down, and the salt supply problem will be greatly improved! Stewed sea bass with mushrooms, add more salt to cope with the severe cold, add onions brought from home and thyme picked and dried locally, this pot of soup can be regarded as a delicacy of this era.
Only nobles can enjoy this kind of delicious meal, and the people of White Tree Manor living in Novgorod are not at a loss either. Rurik sold a batch of salt, and now he simply uses the salt as a reward to recruit a group of idle farmers. Continue to make paper yourself.
These farmers were none other than soldiers of the Slavic Flag Army. Rurik's move was to give his soldiers a chance to benefit.
The potters who cooked hemp were all used, and the pottery craftsmen on the farm also smelled the benefits, and started making new pottery.
These measures require felling wood and making charcoal, which further stimulated the enthusiasm of those who were forced to be idle.
Logging would wear out axes, and the locals whose skills had been spread by Kawei began to clumsily make a living as blacksmiths. The so-called blacksmith is still unable to turn the ore into tools, but at least he has no problem repairing the worn axe.
As for the locals, it was another kind of shock to see the Russians using a two-man saw to cut off the big tree simply and roughly.
It’s almost Hanukkah for the Russians, which is also a major holiday for the Slavic people around Lake Ilmen.
The Eastern Slavs were made up of several tribal confederations, and the group at Lake Ilmen was a northeastern group. In this colder environment, they worshiped the fire god Peron even more. For example, the Radmich tribe living near the Pripet Swamp had to make offerings to the swamp god Cherno to avoid disasters.
Of course the local God Peron must be respected, but the men of the entire White Tree Manor fought many vicious battles for the Principality of Rus and made great contributions with their blood. The fallen were finally cremated with Rus' etiquette, and the so-called souls were gone. Asgard and even Valhalla. They are already Odin's warriors in a real sense, and they have the right and must participate in Odin's sacrifice!
Indo-European tribes living in different regions will hold grand celebrations on the winter solstice. The reason for the coincidence is not only that they share a common ancestor, but also that this day is too unique.
On this day, the daylight is extremely short, which is most noticeable to people at high latitudes. People can even feel that after this day, the days will get longer and longer. Such a unique day must be God's arrangement. It would be unreasonable not to offer sacrifices.
What's more, this year is indeed unusual. Rurik's arrival caused the local priests who were good at smearing their faces with chalk mud to quietly withdraw.
Which blind idiot dares to compete with the Duke for divine power? The priests also noticed the change in the people's mentality. The men called themselves New Rus's, and their relatives also called themselves so. The originally boring winter suddenly became bustling with people, and the people did not fear the cold to work, all in order to get something from the Duke. Tangible benefits, such as exciting salt and silver coins.
Rose's army easily destroyed Pine Needle Manor. Isn't it Lord Rurik who has the final say on the issue of sacrifices at White Tree Manor this year?
It just so happened that the winter solstice ceremony on December 28 of the Julian calendar was approaching. Rurik already knew a lot about the Slavic rituals from his beloved wife Svetlana. If he became the high priest himself, I can get the job done. After all, I have done this kind of thing as a priest too many times at the Stone Ship Altar in Fort Ross.
etc! Stone Ship Altar?
Novgorod lacks a stone ship altar!
Is this okay? Build one quickly. Since local granite was scarce, one was pieced together using wooden piles.
Also considering the feelings of the local Slavs, a wooden tower should be built and then set alight!
In this way, a cow is sacrificed to Odin at the "Wooden Ship Altar", and then a fire tower is lit to worship the Slavic Peron.
As for the priests, his wives and concubines already served as priests. This year, the sacrifices here only lacked Rumia.
"It doesn't matter. Sooner or later, Roseburg will become a pure iron smelting and shipbuilding city. New Roseburg is the capital of a country. Build a permanent and larger temple in New Roseburg, and put the golden statue of Roseburg's temple Move here and let Rumia take charge, and this matter will be settled next year."
Rurik had already decided on his idea, and Rigus could only welcome it, and he and his son Medvet were indeed fully supporting it.
What's more, the principal princess and future high priest Vilia is the gift of winter, and the grand Hanukkah sacrifice on the winter solstice is also her birthday. Is this sacrifice going to be without her?
Rurik planned to let his daughter steal the show at the sacrificial event.
And another piece of good news comes with a woman's wails of pain...
